The Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule by Domenico Ghirlandaio
Within the Catholic church there’s multiple monastic orders such as the Benedictines, Dominicans and Jesuits. Each of these communities focus primarily on one area of faith. For example, preaching and converting others was a priority of the Dominicans, while the Jesuits focused on education. On the other hand, the Franciscans, founded by St. Francis of Assisi, chose a life of poverty. The papacy was usually distrustful towards these religious orders since they each had an agenda, and some could become reform-minded or heretical. He had to personally approve them. In this fresco, St. Francis and eleven of his followers are in Rome, in 1209, before the Pope Innocent III. He’s reluctantly giving them his approval. The scroll the Pope is handing to St. Francis makes it official.
Ghirlandaio transported this important event from Rome of the 12th-century to Florence of the 15th-century. So instead of its original setting of the Lateran Basilica of Rome, you can see Florence in the background with its famous Piazza della Signoria, whose iconic building you can still visit today. The Piazza (Italian for ‘square’) in the fresco’s background shows Palazzo Vecchio (on the left) which is the town hall. Also, there’s the Loggia dei Lanzi (in the middle) which today includes an outdoor gallery of sculpture (a loggia is an arcaded or roofed area attached to a building). Ordinary life goes on behind the scene, there’s even laundry hanging from the first floor from a building on the right.
On the far right, there is the short-haired Italian banker, Francesco Sassetti, who commissioned Ghirlandaio to paint this fresco. He’s standing next to his son, on the far right. Who would he pick to ask the painter to place next to him? The most powerful man in Florence (on his right)! Most of the Renaissance art owes a debt to the support of that man. He’s Lorenzo the Magnificent, the ruler of Florence during its hey-day. Without the patronage and sponsorship of Lorenzo and his famous Medici family, the Renaissance might not have become what it is today — a turning point, a “rebirth” of Western civilization. Lorenzo’s looks might not have been magnificent (note the large, flat nose) but he seems better looking than Sassetti’s brother-in-law, Antonio di Puccio Pucci, on his right.
On the far left, Sassetti’s other sons (Galeazzo, Teodoro and Cosimo) balance the fresco. Walking up the stairs (middle, foreground) is Agnolo Poliziano, a tutor to Lorenzo’s children and a well-known Renaissance scholar and poet. Following the tutor are Lorenzo’s three children: in order from the front, Giuliano di Lorenzo de Medici (grew up to be a duke), Piero the Fatuous (succeeded his father but, as evident from his nickname, his “foolish” strategic mistakes stained his legacy forever) and Giovanni de Medici (a kid with a brighter future who’d grow up to be the first Medici pope, Pope Leo X). Behind the children are two other teachers. Ghirlandaio put into this fresco many figures from the elite of Florence, so much so that he had to overpaint some original figures (note the ghostly-looking monk on the left side).